Amid weeks-long protest of students in Jawaharlal Nehru University against University's administration, a picture went viral with a claim that JNU students are holding placards against "RSS" during their protest because they are left-leaning and the whole protest is politically motivated. A twitter page named India with RSS shared few images with a caption, "What is the relation between fee hike and RSS? What is the relation of “Red Fort” with fee hike? Why the statue of Vivekananda was disgraced? Actually it has nothing to do with fee hike. It was a politically motivated campaign against a particular ideology. #LeftKillingJNU"

At the time of writing this article, this post has been shared more than 500 times. 

The same picture was shared on Facebook as well with similar claims. 

In the viral picture, some students can be seen holding placards with "RSS Murdabad" written on them, with police chasing the students in the background.

The Truth Behind the Claim On reverse image search, we found an article on digital news portals named TFIPOST and Catch news, in which the image was published on 2nd and 4th February 2016, respectively. According to the article, the protesting JNU students had gathered outside the RSS office in Delhi demanding justice for Rohit, a Hyderabad University student whose suicide triggered protests by student unions across the nation and as per the report, some of the students’ group claimed that the RSS was responsible for the deaths of both these men. This protest march was organized on what would have been the 27th birth anniversary of the Rohith Vermula on January 30. The date coincided with the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

Clearly, this viral picture is not from the present JNUprotest as both of these articles were published in 2016.

The video of the incident shown in the viral image was posted by a Facebook page named SFI JNU Unit on 30 January 2016. 

In the 30 seconds long video, we can see students holding the same placard as in the viral picture, after 3 seconds. 

Therefore, we can conclude that an old picture of JNU students from 2016 is being shared as a recent one.